Week 20: creativity

Creativity is a wandering mind and experiences. If you can find yourself an idea that grabs your attention be it old or new or any idea for that matter scribble it down. Creativity isn’t just about art, its everything. What changes the idea from a thought into matter? Motivation, duty, accident? E.g. why idea of light bulb become invention of light bulb? Just to see in dark? Or something more? Everything you look at is someone’s brain child. Everything you listen to and everything you do is someone’s inspired idea. Things like bricks and engines and spaceships. Creativity lives in everyone and how they express it is due to how the environment they were brought up in shaped their ideas and the motivation to excel in what they do. There is no such thing as an original creation, just an inspired take on an existing thing. Things which may seem original like planes and wheels and cars all emulate nature or earlier creations to some degree. Take everything you know stick it in a jar and shake it up. Throw in everything you have ever felt, heard, touched, experienced. Mix it all up in a cauldron under a full moon on the solstice and see what comes out!
The greatest creations are usually carried out by people other than the person whose idea it was, for instance look at things like the SHC(super hadron collider) at Cern that could only have been brought about by many other people hard work. To be truly creative then you must never get bogged down on anything! You must be open to the universe and new ideas. The usual idea of a creative person is someone who thinks of 1000 ideas a day and forgets them just as quick. The reality is similar it’s the creative persons implementers that bring their creativity to life. Sometimes this is the person themselves. Other times like in most instances it’s more talented or skilled individuals that bring out this creativeness, but this also leads to a mixing in of their own ideas making it something more than it began as. A good example of this is games and movies, or architecture, or government policies, or a bank robbery. Where someone else’s idea is brought to life by others. There are those that say that creativity is borne of insanity, and those who believe it is a way that people express the way they perceive an idea or concept.
Creativity is an individual trait; it’s something inherent in all of us but emerges in different ways. From the man who murders hundreds of people and cut them to pieces (gruesome but has happened, leading to the question of the dangerous of creativity unchecked) to Picasso or Da Vinci. But what made these men great artists? Why is their work held in such awe over others?
The other side of the creative coin is curiosity. What happens when people think what if? What if I route the power through the relays this way? (They explode) What happens if I connect this to this instead? (Fork in the toaster) Or if I mix paints in this way, (Hey look! Brown!) or change code like this, (403 Out of cheese error!) or word it like this?
People talk about thinking outside the box making you creative. But in doing that all you do is create a new box for yourself separate to other people.